Everyone wants a lot of Instagram followers. They also want to find and grow these followers fast. They want 10K in one week and will go to great lengths to get this social validation that everyone judges your Instagram account by.

But, algorithmically speaking, do Instagram followers even matter? It’s true that you can get onto the explore page easily when you have thousands of followers, but how do those followers translate over into loyal, paying customers?

Large Does Not Equal Successful

Many small accounts have been able to make quite a bit of money via Instagram without having 10K followers.  Then again, some large accounts breaking 1 million couldn’t sell umbrellas in a rainstorm to their followers.

Having a large following will not save you from getting shadowbanned or spare you drops in engagement either, especially if you have fake followers or ones who aren’t interested in your content.  The Instagram algorithm will look at your posts and go: “Hmm when we show this to a small group of followers and people we think would be interested in this account, they don’t seem to care. Therefore, this must be low-quality content.” After several occurrences of this, Instagram will stop showing your content to people since no one seems to be interested.

If no one’s interested, or able to see your posts, how will they get to know, like and trust you? How will they come to know your brand well enough to buy from you? They won’t.

So you see, followers are not everything. If you can get lots of followers rather quickly, great! But remember that quality must come first. Never raise quantity to a place of higher importance than quality.

Quality over Quantity

If you have true fans and loyal followers, turning those followers into paying customers is much easier and much more lucrative than 10K robots who don’t care about your account.  Here are some ways to keep quality at the forefront of your Instagram strategy:

1. Think from your ideal customer’s perspective. What do they want to see in their feed?
2. Utilize image carousels and video content to engage your audience and keep them on Instagram or your profile page for longer.
3. When you hit a vein that really seems to resonate with people, ask yourself why it resonated. Plan to slowly create more and more content with this resonating factor.
4. Be consistent.  Pick a schedule that will be easy to keep for the foreseeable future of your account. If you stop being consistent, no matter how large of a following you have, you will see a drop in overall engagement.
5. This probably goes without saying, but make sure that all images and videos are crisp and high-quality.
6. If you’re looking for inspiration or to get onto the explore page, look at the posts on the explore page. Pay special attention to the ones from smaller accounts (under 2,000 followers preferably). These posts have gone viral. Now, think about why it went viral and copy that element if you can, personalizing and improving upon it.

All of these tips will help keep your content quality and engagement high so that you can develop your online community and convert high-paying customers who are in love with your brand.

If you’d like some help with gaining high-quality followers or getting a plateaued account running again, feel free to grab one of my strategy sessions, where we can discuss a personalized plan to get your account humming again and attracting paying customers.